Legal Commentary

The conventional wisdom about law professors? teaching preferences is that we are supposed to prefer teaching small seminars on our current research topics.  In fact, we even sometimes call the other classes or ?service courses.?  But conversations I?ve had over the past two years with various profs leads me to believe that not all law professors feel this way.  A surprising number of profs (junior and senior) have told me that they prefer teaching larger classes on core subjects that evaluate students based on an exam, rather than small seminars that require students to write papers.  In fact, several profs I spoke with said that they have stopped teaching seminars all together.

I first started asking profs about their seminars because I was worried that my own seminars weren?t as useful to students as I wish they were.  For example, the first couple of years that I taught my seminar, I had a hard time getting sufficient student participation.  A few people recommended that I appoint student discussion leaders for each class, and so I made that change this year.  While it has lead to a number of good discussions, the quality of the discussion has varied wildly, perhaps based on the abilities of the particular student leader.  And as with faculty-led discussions, the more engaged and thoughtful students tend to shine, while the less engaged or less knowledgeable students continue to remain quiet.

Seminar papers are also very challenging.  Some students write very strong papers, and I am able to assist them to make the papers stronger.  But those students with weak analytical skills or very poor writing skills don?t seem to get much out of the exercise.  Even if I ask them to write multiple drafts, at most the students will make specific changes that I?ve recommended, but they don?t seem to be able to improve their papers beyond that.   Every law professor that I have spoken with has conceded that they don?t find themselves able to give much assistance to their weakest students? papers.

A cynical part of me worries that perhaps I like teaching big exam classes because I can control the class pace and because I assume that all of the students are following along (only the exam results at the end of the semester tell me otherwise).  In contrast, seminars force me to recognize that I am not doing a particularly good job teaching some of the students.  Or perhaps the challenge of seminars lies in the fact that seminars --- unlike core classes, which are designed in large part to teach students a body of information --- are largely designed to teach students to think critically and hone their independent analysis skills.  And while we law professors know how to teach our specific subjects plus the basic skills that underlie legal reasoning (synthesizing cases and applying them to new fact patterns), no one really knows how to teach students to, well, get smarter.

I?m be interested in other people?s thoughts on this issue.  But let me give one quick caveat --- I don?t mean this post to impugn the intellect of the students at my current school.  I taught this seminar a few years ago at one of the top law schools in the country with similar results --- the students who began the class as engaged critical thinkers emerged that way, while less engaged students with weaker analytical skills didn?t seem to benefit much from my efforts.